The Video that Started it All: CBS Head Les Moonves Mentions Negotiations With Amazon

Late last night the WSJ and Reuters broke the story that Simon & Schuster was in negotiations with Amazon for an unnamed reason. They cited CBS CEO Les Moonves as their source, and sparked a whirlwind of coverage.

It's 12 hours later and we still don't know any additional details, but I do have something to share. Both the WSJ and Reuters got their story from an interview which Les Moonves gave at Fortune's Brainstorm Tech Conference (which ends today). The interview was conducted by Fortune’s Adam Lashinsky, and it has been posted to Youtube.

I have embedded the video below. The talk about Amazon starts around the 14:10 mark, and it's well worth your time to watch. Moonves reveals that he is far more ambivalent to Amazon than most people in publishing industry, including people who work for S&S.

The video doesn't support my speculation that Amazon is in talks to buy S&S, but it does suggest that Moonves is open to the idea of working more closely with Amazon by - well, let's just leave that sentence unfinished. I'm done with my speculating on this topic, so I'm not going to finish that thought.

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Nate Hoffelder

Nate Hoffelder is the founder and editor of The Digital Reader:
He's here to chew bubble gum and fix broken websites, and he is all out of bubble gum. He has been blogging about indie authors since 2010 while learning new tech skills at the drop of a hat. He fixes author sites, and shares what he learns on The Digital Reader's blog. In his spare time, he fosters dogs for A Forever Home, a local rescue group.

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4 Comments

The only thing sexier than publishing for a giant corporation to dabble in is television. And the only thing sexier than that is film. Since CBS already has a huge television presence, and is trying to move into film in a bigger way, it makes sense to me they might sell off their publishing operation.

Frankly, it would make a lot of sense for them to get rid of the legacy printing. With all their content, they would be smart to start a new digital publishing company later without all the dead weight of S&S.

[…] The Simon & Schsuter negotiation, on the other hand, was much less bitter all around. The first that anyone knew that there was a deal in the works was when CBS head Les Moonves happened to mention the detail in an interview in July. […]